


doubt

by foxmagpie



Series: little gifts [6]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Mental Anguish, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 02:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19432300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: Set within 2x09. Beth grieves after Dean takes her children. Failing to get them back, she falls into feelings of self-doubt and anxiety about her choices. She skips drops and ignores Rio for a week, then is rejected by him when she asks for a loan.---Apprehension balloons in Beth. The joint traumas of her present battle of her losing her kids and a possible future where she is dragged away from them twists inside of her. Combined with Dean’s demand that she is leaves crime, forgood, Beth feels the self-doubt sink into her skin.Is she done? Withallof it? Can she be?Ruby comes up with a plan to rob the Quik Cash, which actually sounds pretty good (Beth knows that it's good because she feels a flash of excitement hit her when she hears it)—but Beth thinks of the way she had felt a jolt of panic at Dean’s words:I want you done.If she has to, can she walk away from all this?





	doubt

The next morning, Beth wakes up and Annie is sprawled out in her bed with her, basically on top of her, snoring loudly. She’s wearing her jeans and sweater, and Beth is pressed close to her. On her other side, there’s an empty space where Ruby slept. 

The truth hits her again: Dean took her children. Beth never imagined that this would happen, but if pressed, if she’d had to conjure up what she would feel if it did happen, she would have said she would feel despair or fury, some sort of extreme on the emotional scale. Instead, she just feels numb. Nothingness envelopes her. She can’t process any of it because she can’t believe it’s true.

It’s only the silence of the house that convinces her it’s real.

Beth lies in the bed, Annie’s leg flailed over hers, Annie’s arm crisscrossed over Beth’s chest, doing nothing. She just lies there, uncomfortable but unable to register it. She stares at the ceiling but she doesn’t see it. 

Ruby comes back into the bedroom with a plate full of breakfast foods.

“Beth?”

Beth turns to her head to look at her, but her face remains slack and her eyes distant.

“You need to eat,” Ruby says. “I know you don’t want to, but you need to.”

“I will,” Beth lies. “Just set it on the end table.”

“No, I need to see you do it,” Ruby says firmly.

Beth just turns her head so her eyes refocus on the ceiling. 

Ruby is about to speak again when Annie’s phone starts ringing on the bedside table next to her. She jolts awake and fumbles for the phone. “‘Lo? Oh, hi… Yeah, no, I’m at Aunt Beth’s…” Annie slowly rolls away from Beth and sits up on the side of the bed. She drops her voice to a whisper. “I’ll explain it to you later, okay? No, I promise, we’re going to celebrate. No, we’re _going_ to. You’re not getting out of this! I said we would, and we are. It’s a big deal! I’ll be home as soon as I can, so be ready, okay?”

Annie hangs up the phone and looks over her shoulder at Beth, but although Beth has heard the words, she hasn’t really computed them. Ruby has, however.

“Are you celebrating the new baby… with Sadie? Shouldn’t Sadie be doing that with Gregg and Nancy?”

“No, no, it’s not that... Actually, um… I have some really good news. But,” she says, glancing at Beth. “We can totally wait to talk about it until later. It’ll still be good, then—there’s really no rush.”

Ruby tilts her head and mouths something to Annie. Annie tries to mouth something back, but Ruby, who is terrible at reading lips, says, _"_ _Huh? ”_

Annie tries again. Ruby throws up her hands in confusion. Annie tries for the third time, and Ruby’s reaction gets more exaggerated. She still has no idea what Annie is trying to pantomime.

“Just tell us.” Beth’s voice comes out low and flat. Lifeless.

“No, Beth, it’s not the time.” Annie shakes her head. “Seriously, I’ll tell you later.”

“Just give me something else to think about.”

Ruby and Annie exchange a look over Beth. Ruby seems to be discouraging Annie from telling, but Annie jabs a finger at Beth and shrugs her shoulders.

“Annie,” Beth says.

“Okay, well. It’s a big deal, we’re really excited about it, and Sadie already said that it was okay to tell you… so I just will.”

“Oh my _GOD,_ ” Ruby says, exasperated, waving her hand like _get on with it_. 

“Sadie came out last night.” Annie face breaks into a huge smile. “We gotta boy, everybody! Sixty-three inches, one hundred and one pounds, nine point seven five-ish fingers and ten toes!” 

“Okay, first,” Ruby says. “That’s wonderful. Second, what do you mean ‘nine point seven five-ish fingers?’”

“Yeah, there was that shrimp accident a while back.” Annie shudders. Then she turns serious again and looks at Beth, waiting to see if Beth was able to process any of this.

Beth is, with a great amount of effort, able to offer a weak smile. She pats Annie on the hand and rubs her thumb along Annie’s thumb. It means _I love you._ It means _Somewhere inside of me, I’m happy for you_. It means _This is all I can do right now._ Annie nods and leans down to nuzzle her head into Beth’s shoulder. She understands.

Ruby sits down on the edge of the bed and hands Beth a piece of toast. “Eat,” she says.

Beth waves her hand, shooing the food away. “Later.”

“No,” Ruby says. “You need this. Look, I don’t want to overreact here, but… you’re scaring me. You’re reminding me of your mom. You can’t just lie here all day, not eating, not moving. You need to get out of bed. You need to get angry and mad and throw shit, okay? You need to march over to that bitch Judith’s house and yell your goddamned head off and tear into Dean. You need to fight for your—”

Annie cuts her off. “Ruby. _Ruby._ I love you. And we are so thankful for you… and I get why you’re concerned. I’m not gonna pretend that I’m not. But let’s give her 24 hours, okay?”

There’s some hesitation, but Ruby gives a curt nod.

“Beth,” Annie says softly. “We’re going to leave. We’re going to give you today to just grieve and stay in bed and to just… wallow, okay? We’ll leave the food here. I’ll make a pot of coffee and make it just the way you like it, and I’ll bring you a cup. And some water. And aspirin. We’re not going to make you talk or think or process or anything. Twenty-four hours, whatever you need, okay?”

Beth turns to look her at sister. “I need a favor.”

“Yes,” Annie says, promising already. “What is it?”

“The drops are starting back up tonight. I need you to do it.”

Annie and Ruby exchange looks. Ruby looks hesitant, but Annie’s got the resolve.

“Whatever you need, girl. We got you.”

–--

Beth lies in bed the whole day, getting up only twice to use the bathroom. Sometimes she sleeps, but it’s fitful and disturbed. Mostly she’s awake without being fully conscious. She wonders, vaguely, if this how her mother felt. She would be horrified if she could muster up the emotion. 

Day turns into night. The house grows cooler, darker, and somehow, even quieter. 

Her phone has buzzed several times so far. Annie and Ruby both checked in, just telling her they were thinking about her, that the drop was handled, that they didn’t expect a response, that they loved her. 

Rio sends a text, but Beth doesn’t open it. A few more hours pass and he calls twice, but Beth ignores it. When the phone rings a third time, she shuts it off. 

All she wants is to be alone.

-–-

The next week passes by in a blur. One morning she even wakes up and thinks she hears the kids banging around in the kitchen; she gets up and even _sees_ them there, mixing up batter in a bowl—and then it vanishes, swallowed up like something sinking into the darkest depths of black water.

That’s what this all feels like: drowning in an inky ocean. It’s like feeling ice cold and trying to kick and struggle and survive long enough to get to the air, to burst up and break the surface of the water, but, oh, it would also feel so nice to just let the current take her and pull her under. 

She could lie in this bed forever, and that would be okay.

Annie and Ruby don’t allow it, however. They keep their promise: one day under the covers, that’s it. Beth does well the second day—she gets up, showers, and calls Dean fifty times in fits of rage. The minute he picks up, she starts barreling into him about taking the kids, about the cancer, about the hitmen. He stops answering after the third call (he’d hung up on her each time) and after that, she leaves half-mad ramblings (with bouts of screaming) on his answering machine until she fills the whole thing up. 

The third day is full of tears. She calls Dean twenty-five more times. He’s still not answering, but it appears he’s erased all of his messages, so she leaves him more where she’s crying and begging and pleading with him to bring the kids home. 

On the fourth day, she struggles to get out of bed again. The numbness has returned, and Ruby has to forcefully drag her out and shove her into the shower. She’s resentful, but once the water hits her she starts to _feel_ again. 

On the fifth day, Beth drives over to Judith’s house, desperate to see her babies. Dean won’t let her cross the threshold of the door, however, and as she can hear the kids playing in the next room, just out of her eyesight, she leaves, defeated, not wanting to cause a scene in front of them. 

Through all of this, she gets Ruby and Annie to cover three more drops. She gets a few more phone calls from Rio, but she doesn’t pick up. Beth can’t say the words to one more person. She also can’t pretend that nothing is the matter. And she’s not sure he’s ready to see her at her worst. Whatever this thing is between them? It’s fragile and tenuous—she doesn’t want to expose him to the realities and despairs of divorce and custody battles.

Besides that, Rio is all-encompassing. Her entire focus is on her kids right now. It has to be. There’s no room for Rio in that. 

She expects he’ll show up on her back porch any day now, but she can’t muster up any more energy to fret over him and his reaction to her behavior. Normally he would never know the difference, who was abandoning these cars in front of sketchy houses or in random parking garages and grocery store lots, but his text message on that first day had asked her why she hadn't shown up to the drop. 

She’s not sure why he was checking up on her like that. When she thinks about it later, she feels the prickles of irritation. What, now that everything's going so good on the personal side, he backslides on how much he trusts her on the professional side? She supposed that nowadays she was probably messing up both sides of their relationship. Still, there was nothing she could do about it.

Aside from obsessively calling Dean, Beth sews. She goes to the fabric store and finds three very tasteful blue patterns: some white and blue stripes, a solid navy, and a very nice blue background with a gold hexagonal vector pattern. The concentration it takes to measure, cut, and sew evenly is the only thing that keeps her from obsessing over her kids deep into the night. She sews by lamplight, barely gets any sleep, but she’s able to finish the project by the end of the week.

Beth carefully folds the quilt up neatly and wraps it up in blue ribbon. She places it in a large blue bag with blue and white tissue paper. 

When she presents the gift to Sadie, he pulls it out and isn’t quite sure how to react. “Thanks, Aunt Beth,” he says slowly, trying to figure out why on earth she has presented him with a quilt on some random Sunday, weeks and weeks ahead of his birthday.

“Flip it over,” she says.

Sadie does, and finds the careful lettering that Beth has stitched into the backside of the quilt: _It’s a boy! December 19th, 2006._ _2:43 am. 8 lbs, 7 oz. 19 inches._

“What... is this?” Sadie asks. But he doesn’t want to appear ungrateful so in a rush, he says, “I mean, I love it. Thanks.”

“Well, it’s kind of two things,” Beth explains. “It’s a replacement baby blanket. Your _proper_ baby blanket, you know, like a keepsake. But I made it big because… well, I thought you might be feeling like you’ve outgrown that floral bedspread you’ve got right now. I didn’t stitch your name in yet, just because I thought you might change it, maybe, someday—but you just let me know which name to stitch in there, and I’ll do it, okay?”

Sadie looks at Beth with those big, beautiful eyes, and a tentative and very nervous smile blooms on his face. “Thank you,” he says. “I—just. Thanks.”

Beth nods and smiles, and this is the only time she’s felt anything close to resembling joy in the last several days. Sadie’s not her kid, but Beth was there for his birth, for his first steps, his first words. Annie had been so young, so ill-equipped, and Beth had basically raised Annie, so Beth had helped raise Sadie, too, for the first several years of his life. Sadie gets up and Beth pulls him into a hug. His smell and his little body pressed against her is a balm to all of the pain of the last week.

“You wanna go put it on your bed?” Beth asks, kissing Sadie’s hair, and Sadie nods.

“That was really nice,” Annie says when Sadie disappears into his room to strip his old bedspread and replace it with the new one. “I mean, all that blue was a little overkill, though. How gender conformist can you get? We’re _breaking_ the binary, remember?” Annie starts picking up the bag and the tissue paper. She smiles, letting Beth know it’s a joke—but Beth would be able to tell anyway because tears are lining the rims of Annie’s eyes. “Seriously. Thank you.”

Beth pulls her into a hug, too. 

-–-

The next morning, Monday, Beth knows what to do. She feels like a fox in a trap, like she has to chew her own leg off just to survive, but if it will help her get her kids back, she’ll do it. 

She dials Dean. He’s ignoring all of her calls at this point, but she suspects he’s listening to the voice mails.

“Dean… I’m sorry.” She’s really only half-sorry, and only about the craziness of her voicemails, but she’ll let him believe it’s about everything, if he’ll just meet her. “Please meet me so we can discuss this. I’ll… behave, I promise.” The words taste like poison on her tongue, but she knows it’s what her husband wants to hear. “Please meet me at Elmhurst Park at noon. Please. I… I’m so sorry. Please just meet me.”

Returning to this meek version of herself is physically painful, but Beth supposes that gnawing off an essential part of your body just to be free from the jaws that are holding you like a vice grip is expected to be painful. She’ll play the docile, subdued version of herself until she’s got the upper hand—like a fly trap. Lure them with honey or whatever. 

At noon, Beth sits on the bench at Elmhurst Park, the one that Rio usually meets her at. She doesn’t know why she picked this location. A part of her wants Rio to show up here and see Dean—to learn about what Dean’s done and to do _something_ —nothing extreme, nothing drastic. Just something that scares him into giving her back her kids. The other part of her, the rational part, knows that that would only make things so much worse. Rio doesn’t do things by halves, and Dean will freak if he even gets a whiff of Rio. 

She doesn’t have to worry about it, though. Rio’s not here. He’s even stopped calling. That knowledge sits in Beth’s stomach like a stone, but she still can’t focus on that problem. Not yet.

The minutes tick by. Beth drinks most of her coffee and her leg jitters in nervous anticipation. Maybe he won’t come. Maybe he senses the trap she’s trying to set, or maybe he really has just stopped listening to her voicemails. Beth waits, though, because maybe he’s just making her wait for him so he can show her who’s really in control.

Nearly a half hour after twelve o'clock, Dean arrives holding his own coffee cup. He doesn’t apologize for being late. Beth doesn’t say anything, which seems to agitate him. He’d wanted the upper hand, he’d wanted to humiliate her. He’d wanted to show her how little her time and patience means to him, so he forces her to acknowledge it by bringing it up himself. 

“Did I keep you waiting?”

“It’s fine,” Beth demures. “I understand. I know how busy you are.” She knows he wanted to see her ruffled, but he forgets she also knows how to soothe him. Pretending that everything is fine is pretending that Dean can do no wrong. He likes that version of reality, too. 

“Well, what did you want?” He sits on the bench next to her and, instead of looking at her, looks out over the park. 

“You can’t just take them away,” she says. She makes sure her voice sounds weak and pathetic. This part’s not hard. Without her kids, she _feels_ exactly like that. If she had it her way, she’d never let Dean know that, but she knows he likes a weak and pathetic Beth. He likes a Beth that defers totally to his judgment. If that’s what it takes, that’s what she’ll give him.

Dean doesn’t answer that, which Beth expected would be the case. “Is this where you meet?” The question is somewhat of a surprise, however, because she didn’t think Dean would know this.

“Who says that?”

“‘Mommy’s friend with the drawings on his neck.’” He must be quoting Kenny, Danny, or Emma. She’s sure Jane knows his name by now. Does that mean Dean knows it, too?

She imagines him questioning her children, pretending to be casually interested. He’s too much of a coward to have ever asked Beth himself, so he’d used them as pawns to feed his own obsession of pinning down the elements of Beth’s life he didn’t have total control over for the past several months. Pathetic.

“I keep them far away,” Beth says since it’s what he wants to hear. She hopes Jane hasn’t told him about Chuck E. Cheese, or Rio hanging out in her kitchen. Besides, it’s true that she keeps them away from the scary things. 

“Jane says he’s got a little boy about her age,” Dean says, and he finally looks at her. His lips are pursed. 

“What do you want?” Beth asks. She wants to cut to the chase. Let him demand what he wants, let Beth pretend she can give it to him for a while. No Rio visits at the house. Fine. No meeting up with the kids in tow. Okay. He’ll take back the dealership, she’s sure. Not an issue—she and Rio can flip their game.

“I want you done.” 

This takes Beth aback. _Entirely?_

“It’s not that simple,” Beth says slowly. 

She knew she would have to struggle for it. She’d prepared for that. She knew he would have to feel like she’s giving something up for him. It’s just... She didn’t expect him to go to this extreme. She’d given him some undue credit for being a rational person—figured he would realize that without Rio, they’re dead broke. At worst, she had expected him to say that she had to do her business with Rio through someone else, one of his associates. Not this. 

“I want my family safe,” he says. 

She has to bite her tongue. _Is that why you invited teenagers into our home and showed them where we hide our money? Is that why you hired hitmen to kill a gang leader? Is that why you’ve consistently failed to ensure our financial survival?_

“How do you think we pay for things?” she asks, flailing. She has to put up a fight, at least for appearances—Dean has to feel like he’s taking something away from her—but it’s starting to feel real. She knows, though, that a logical fight is the most appropriate tactic. She can’t let him peek into her protectiveness over her partnership with Rio. She definitely can’t let him see how much she cares about her success in that world. It has to be about the money. _Just_ the money. 

“Who cares?” Yeah. That’s an appropriate Dean response. Head in the sand again. _Who cares?_ Beth cares. Beth doesn’t want her kids to feel how she felt growing up.

“We could lose our house,” she tries. He’d been so proud of being able to provide that for his family. Maybe—

“So we’ll get an apartment.”

She wants to say, _We_ _won’t get anything._ Instead, she says, “With four children?”

“Probably sleep better,” Dean says. Who knew Dean was losing any sleep until he suspected Rio was touching his wife? He was surprisingly okay with everything until he started to see the ways Rio emboldened Beth, until he started to see the ways he made her happy. 

“It’s not just the house, Dean. It’s braces, it’s college, it’s the clothes on their backs—” 

“At least the park would be a park again,” Dean says gesturing at the play structures. He abruptly stands up to leave, and Beth falters. She’d wanted this to go better, but it looks like Dean has figured out where to push Beth’s buttons as well. 

She’s bitten off more than she can chew, somehow, but not enough to escape from this trap. She thought playing timid would be enough, but Dean knows more than she'd realized. She'd been so wrapped up in Rio, she hadn't been paying attention to the signals she was giving about the two of them—to him, to her children. She thought Dean was oblivious, but he’d been paying attention for once. Because of this miscalculation, now Dean wants to force her back into the box of her old life, wants nothing less than that, and it might be that Beth can't figure out a way to wiggle out of this one. 

“Wait!” she calls to his retreating body. “Will you just wait?”

It takes a good amount of effort on Dean’s part, but he turns and stares at her, waiting for her to say something. 

“What about Emma’s birthday?” 

“We’re doing it at my mom’s,” he says. “Kids would love to see you.”

With that, he leaves, still with the upper hand. He’s holding it above her, pushing her down, keeping her firmly underneath the surface of water.

–--

It's true that bad things happen in threes. While Beth was at the park with Dean, Ruby was at the Quik Cash trying to borrow 35 grand to post Stan’s bail. The other shoe finally dropped: Turner was coming for them. He’d arrested Stan in front of Sara and Harry that same morning. 

Apprehension balloons in Beth. The joint traumas of her present battle of her losing her kids and a possible future where she is dragged away from them twists inside of her. Combined with Dean’s demand that she is leaves crime, _for good,_ Beth feels the self-doubt sink into her skin. 

Is she done? With _all_ of it? Can she be?

Ruby comes up with a plan to rob the Quik Cash, which actually sounds pretty good (Beth knows that it's good because she feels a flash of excitement hit her when she hears it)—but Beth thinks of the way she had felt a jolt of panic at Dean’s words: _I want you done_. 

If she has to, can she walk away from all this?

–--

Overcoming doubt has been one of Beth’s largest obstacles in her life. Growing up with parents too wrapped up in their own garbage to pay their children any attention—let alone show them any semblance of affection? Having grown up feeling like the only person uncertain if her parents loved her, doubt had a permanent home in Beth’s chest. It blossomed every time she stared at herself hard in the mirror, and thought about all the ways she could have been _more_. 

Dean’s early attention had acted as a salve to Beth’s disbelief in her own worth or qualities. He complimented her, soothed her, and propped her up… which meant when he withheld his affection, Beth crumpled like a withered flower. 

In the last half-year alone, Beth had been cheated on, drawn the attention of a gang leader, betrayed the king, failed to kill him when presented the opportunity, been the reason her own husband almost died, and she had floundered when trying to properly deal with every threat that had nearly done away with her permanently. It was hard to see her accomplishments at this point, which left her feeling very uncertain about what her next step on the path was going to be.

Beth tries to balance it all by asking Ruby to delay the robbery of the Qwik Cash. She has one last desperate thing to try to save them all.

–--

Rio is waiting for Beth at the bar when she arrives. He’s never late for a meeting; Beth is always fifteen minutes early, and he’s always exactly on time, even to the minute. Beth often thinks that _god, he is a control freak,_ but Annie would say the same about Beth being that early to everything, even casual events like carpool pickup. But here Rio is, early, sipping on a drink already.

“Where you been?” he drawls. He doesn’t look at her. 

Beth feels uneasy and unbalanced. It’s been a while since they’ve talked, but suddenly everything has shifted again. She knew this was a business conversation, but she didn’t think that meant… Well. She'd miscalculated.

“Indisposed,” she says vaguely. 

“Yeah?” He nods.“Well. I see those stoner kids that robbed you are in a cell. You get your money back?’ He tips the glass back to drink some more, then puts both of his hands around the rim of the glass when he sets it back down on the counter. 

Beth’s shoulders tense. She hadn’t expected that her failures would have to be the forefront of this meeting, but of course, they are. Why start a meeting where she has to beg a man for money to help save her ass any other way?

“I’m guessing you already know what happened,” she sighs. She wants to say _Skip the games, please._

“Now I do.” Rio turns his head to look at Beth. His face is unreadable: his eyebrows tight, his jack slack, his eyes squinting while his lips betray the hint of a smile. God, what the hell does _that_ mean? “So how’s my cut comin’? You know you’re late.”

“Three days overdue,” Beth says. “I’m very aware. And I’m very sorry, but I’ve been…” She has nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn’t make her want to instantly burst into flames just to get out of the conversation. She feels like a bug being squished.

How was she so stupid to believe that _she_ was capable of maintaining some deftness over handling a man like _Rio_ in a business capacity as well as… _other…._ capacities?

She feels herself sinking even lower when she thinks that she had seriously entertained an absurdly desperate dream they could really _be_ something, maybe, if only… 

She would never admit that to anyone, that she daydreamed about doing something as simple as cooking together or even going to parent-teacher conferences together. Now it’s all vanished, and although it was never there in the first place, it seems to leave an open wound in Beth’s chest. 

Beth's so embarrassed at all the ways she was ill-prepared for what she had walked headfirst into with unearned confidence. Her parents were right: her impulsivity would get her into trouble someday. 

Now she has to drag herself to him, this man she’s been fantasizing about in ways that could never be, and she has to beg him to save her because she has to finally admit… she can’t do it herself. She'd tried and failed, but what hadn’t she tried and failed at recently?

Humiliating didn’t even begin to cover this feeling pounding in Beth’s head. 

“You’re slipping, darlin’,” he says. He says it serenely, but his jaw is working furiously. “Between that and not showing up to your drops… you basically not doing your job at this point.”

“What happened to _partners_? You said you shouldn’t have to be following me at this point.”

“Yeah, I said I _shouldn’t_ have to, not that I _don’t_ have to,” Rio shoots back. 

Beth’s taken aback. It feels like everything that’s happened to them has been scrubbed out. They’re ten steps back from where she remembers them being. The thought makes her dizzy.

“What does it even matter? The drop happened.”

Rio sucks his teeth.

“Look, you’re always telling me to find solutions to my own problems. I had a problem, I found a solution. Was the drop made?”

“Mhm,” Rio says, giving a curt nod. 

“Was it on time?”

“Mhm.”

“Was there any problem whatsoever, besides the fact that you wanted to see _me_ make a mistake where none happened?”

Rio smirks, then leans in close to her. “Yeah, ma, there was. This was _your_ job.”

Beth turns her face away from him, and as discreetly as possible, wipes away one tear. 

Neither of them says anything for a minute, but then, quietly: “I aint go to your drop to find you making a mistake.” Rio’s teeth are grinding loudly. “I went ‘cause I had to be sure y— _we_ —were safe. There was a leak. I was ensurin’ sure it was patched properly.”

Beth’s ability to interpret Rio’s cryptic words has dulled in their one-week separation. Beth can’t quite tell if she’s being threatened as bait for their downfall, or whether Rio was somehow looking out for her in a way he wasn’t looking out for anyone else. 

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” Beth says honestly. She doesn’t look at Rio, only hears his silence. 

“I need 35 grand.” Beth hears the words, but doesn’t remember saying them.

Rio sets his jaw again. “Yeah, I’m not Merrill Lynch.” He looks over at her. 

“Well, then can I get some fake cash so I can move cars?”

Rio laughs and looks into his glass before drinking it. “Yeah, how’s my cut coming?” They’re circling the drain. 

“Slow.”

“And why’s that?”

Does he want to hear her say it? _I failed._ _I didn't take your advice._ _I refused your help. I was wrong_. She won't say it. “You know why.”

“So those stoner kids didn’t feel bad and put all your money back?” Rio asks.

 _Why can’t he drop this?_ Beth feels herself slipping.

“You’ll get your cut,” she tries promising. If only she could figure out the other stuff _first,_ she could get it for him, she could get him more than she owes him—if she could just convince Dean, and if she could just save Ruby and Stan, and if she could only just—if she could only just succeed at getting him to help her... then she could fix all of it. Instead, she's being horribly, despairingly rejected. Her vulnerability feels like a glass casing around her body: when it gets shattered, which it will, the blast zone will cut everybody.

All of these thoughts drop out of her head as Beth closes her eyes for one second and breathes in Rio’s scent. 

“And when you do, you’ll get more money,” Rio says simply, emphasizing it all with his hands. “That’s how this all works.”

Beth hates feeling desperate. It always makes her feel suffocated, like when she’s short of breath and needs to get in a deep breath and just can’t.

“You know what would be so nice?” 

“Hmm?”

“Is if you gave me a break, _just_ once.” 

Something flashes in Rio’s eyes that Beth can’t recognize, almost as if he disagrees vehemently with her statement.

 _He will_ never _give me a break,_ Beth thinks she understands.

“Rough week?” Rio asks with a hint of amusement, eyes locked with hers.

“My husband took my children.”

Rio looks away from her, of course. Beth can’t look at him, though, either. Heat is creeping up her neck. It was awful enough, just thinking of asking him. She hadn’t considered what it would be like to hear him say _no_. Dean had never said no. Asking was miserable, but Dean liked being able to say yes. He liked being able to use his kindness as a bargaining chip later. Rio didn’t need that. He was too powerful to have to work within that system.

He’s still not looking at her when, several seconds later, he says, “I know it’s lonely at the top.”

Since Beth is also looking away, she doesn’t see the way Rio’s fingers twitch against his glass before he says this. She doesn’t see the way his face, usually so indifferent, betrays his emotions as he shares that he, too, experiences loneliness in this life. Beth barely registers the magnitude of this comment, this revealing and baring of the weight of solitude. 

Wrapped up in herself, Beth is unable to imagine this meeting from Rio’s perspective. Had she tried, she might consider that this man, this deeply private man— who carried on multiple business interactions with her without her even knowing his _name_ , him _never_ even telling her his name—had, in the last month alone, entered a dangerous drug den to retrieve a baby blanket for her and been on the receiving end of an accusatory but vague midnight drunk dial from her. Not only that, he’d met one of her children. In his world, he’d basically revealed his hand to her by initiating their second intimate encounter while telling her he was _thinking_ about her and _asking_ if she was out on a date with another man.

No, Beth did not consider how this man might be feeling after all that, after being completely ignored immediately following all of that, only to then be asked to loan her 35 thousand dollars with no explanation or precedence. No, Beth was not thinking about any of this.

She only hears him reminding her that she had wanted to be on top, and now she was reaping the consequences.

Beth scoffs. She isn’t cut out for this. She’s _bad_ at this. He had every right to not believe in her. He knew when he handed her the gun she wouldn’t shoot. He was so confident that, despite knowing she would have no idea whether it was loaded or not, he had filled the chamber with enough bullets to ensure he was dead and gone if she just lost control for one second. He knew she couldn’t. He had always known. 

And because of that, all of the things she wondered if he was feeling towards her? None of that could be real, either.

Only someone like Dean could understand, someone else who had also failed at everything to the detriment of many. Only he was at her level. 

“Will you set her up for me? On my tab?” Rio asks the bartender. 

He’s leaving. Of course, he’s leaving. She has nothing left to give him, so he has nothing for which to stay.

He squeezes her arm and walks out.

Beth's all alone with an open tab and every single one of her doubts.

"Another," she says to the bartender. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for the angst, y'all. I know many of you wanted Beth to stand her ground and take no shit from Dean unlike in the show, but my creativity just flowed better for her to do exactly what she did in the show within a hopefully larger context/frame of reference that explains her shifting feelings. This chapter was by no means fun to write and it was definitely the most difficult one to write. Even worse was the fact that the Rio interaction had to be so depressing, but I wanted to feed Beth's self-doubt monster so that she felt like she really had to walk away from Rio in the next chapter after they sleep together—I think that decision is already so impossibly hard for her, I wanted her to feel like she truly had no other choice. I headcanon that preying on Beth's doubt and assuming the role of the ~only~ one supposedly believing her is the most important way that Dean has held his reign over Beth for so long. 
> 
> I can feel that I'm gonna be diverging from canon pretty soon in order to explore more Beth/Rio moments, but not quite yet! Hope it's not too tortuous to stick through this part for just a little longer!


End file.
